Video Game Addiction: Notable deaths-exhaustion from playing games for excessive periods of time. Players may play many hours per day, gain or lose significant weight due to playing, disrupt sleep patterns to play, play at work, avoid phone calls from friends and/or lie about play time. Relationships with family and friends and performance at work or school may suffer. Violence: Previous studies also found that more than 85 percent of video games contain some violence, and approximately half of video games include serious violent actions.
There are plenty of violent video games which are not restricted to minors, affecting their social behavior to become more vulgar and aggressive. Some players may already be mentally disturbed and might not be able to differentiate between the virtual game and the real world, which may result in their mimicking the extreme violence in the games they play. In April 2000, 16-year-old Spanish teenager Jose Rabadan Pardo murdered his father, mother and his sister with a katana, proclaiming that he was on an “avenging mission” by Squall Leonhart, a character in the video game Final Fantasy VIII.
Notable deaths Desensitization to Violence: The initial surprise, or disgust felt when viewing violent images is gradually reduced over repeated viewings. This means that the images make less and less of an impact over time. Instead of finding them shocking and disturbing, kids soon experience these realistic scenes as amusing and entertaining. In addition, the offenders in video games rarely receive negative consequences for their actions, nor do they show empathy or remorse for pain inflicted on their victims.
In a study at Iowa State University, participants played one of eight randomly assigned violent or non-violent video games for 20 minutes and were then asked to watch a 10-minute videotape of actual violent episodes taken from TV programs and commercially-released films. Heart rate and skin response were monitored throughout the viewing. The study showed that the heart rate and skin response of those who played violent games change less than those who didn’t play the violent games. Lack of socialization Many children tend to play video games at home instead of going out and playing with others.
Thus, they are unable to develop social skills as the interaction possible in video games is very limited as players can only interact through chat. In contrast, when they go out and play with others, they are able to interact with others in more ways. Mimic stunts On August 2, 2008, Polwat Chinno, a 19-year-old Thai teenager, stabbed a Bangkok taxi driver to death during an attempt to steal the driver’s cab in order to obtain money to buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV. A police official said that the teen was trying to copy a similar act in the game.
As a consequence, officials ordered the banning of the series, which led its distributor, New Era Interactive Media, to withdraw it, including the aforementioned, then-upcoming installment, from shops across Thailand On June 25, 2003, two American step brothers, Joshua and William Buckner, aged 14 and 16, respectively, used a rifle to fire at vehicles on Interstate 40 in Tennessee, killing a 45-year-old man and wounding a 19-year-old woman. The two shooters told investigators they had been inspired by Grand Theft Auto III Get games
In September 2007 in Ohio, 16-year-old Daniel Petric snuck out of his bedroom window to purchase the game Halo 3 against the orders of his father, a minister at New Life Assembly of God in Wellington, Ohio, U. S. [64] His parents eventually banned him from the game after he spent up to 18 hours a day with it, and secured it in a lockbox in a closet where the father also kept a 9mm handgun, according to prosecutors. In October 2007, Daniel used his father’s key to open the lockbox and remove the gun and the game. He then entered the living room of his house and shot both of them in the head, killing his mother and wounding his father.
Petric is sentenced to life in prison without parole, which was later commuted to 23 years in imprisonment. Defense attorneys argued that Petric was influenced by video game addiction, the court dismissed these claims. The judge, James Burge commented that while he thought there was ample evidence the boy knew what he was doing, Burge thought the game had affected him like a drug, saying “I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever. “
